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An anonymous reader writes "A new software app by Google, developed in cooperation with MIT, enables one-step task transfers between Android Smartphones and PCs. If you are like me, you transfer tasks from smartphone to the desktop the hard way at least once a day, so let's get together and crowd-poll Google to commercialize this app so it's as easy as taking a picture with our smartphone!"

So you're going to download some Twitter and a Facebook to your Dropbox so you can monetize the social media experience that you've cultivated through collaborative integration with business-to-business and client-to-business customers? Will you vertically cover all horizontals in your never-ending quest for innovation and venture-funded entrepreneurship? Groupon.

So you're going to download some Twitter and a Facebook to your Dropbox so you can monetize the social media experience that you've cultivated through collaborative integration with business-to-business and client-to-business customers? Will you vertically cover all horizontals in your never-ending quest for innovation and venture-funded entrepreneurship? Groupon.

Darn, I'd hoped from the title that there was live migration of running applications between phone and PC so getting back to the office was as easy as switching the current app over to the non-portable's VM. Oh, wait, this is still 2011, we don't have the displays for that mobile work yet. Nevermind folks, nothing to see here.

Well, it's probably only feasible with some type of virtualization. There's been a lot of work done on this in Java, mostly for parallel computing, but it's certainly possible to move a running Java process to another JVM on another computer. With mobile devices we now have the "why" so I think this will happen fairly soon. But it's kindof a hack. There's been work on global address space operating systems, such as Phantom OS [wikipedia.org], which has a single global address space. If you further abstracted that to be

It sounds vaguely similar to the new feature in HP WebOS, where two devices only have to be tapped together in order to be synced. That's still only for phones and tablets, of course, but I wouldn't be surprised if it makes its way into PC's when the promised WebOS PC's appear in a few months.

It's called ActiveSync, and there are implementations (e.g. z-Push, funambol)

Funambol is an implementation of industry standards like SyncML, OMA-DM and others, which is why it works with everything from Nokia and Sony Ericsson feature phones to the iPhone. ActiveSync is a Microsoft abomination that should hopefully die out with Windows Phone and Nokia.

...lets get together and crowd-poll Google to commercialize this app so its as easy as taking a picture with our smartphone!

Commercialise? Commercialise?!?

How about we get together and crowd-poll Google to release it under a FOSS license so we can take it and make it do whatever the fuck we want it to, and then share it with a couple million of our closest friends?

I'd ask the anonymous submitter to hand in their geek card, but I can't bring myself to believe they ever actually had one....

what is tasks in this context? I'm pretty sure they're not talking about moving dalvik processes from the phone live when running to desktop and back.. but if this is just some "text items under category x" then i'm quite sure there's already some apps out there that would provide this for you(or a syncing shopping list app, whatever). also i'm one of those guys though who doesn't want syncing between all his stuff - you know, for some privacy redundancy.

Try spelling the word properly, if you're looking for people to support your idea.

The OP did spell the word correctly (commercialise). Try getting out of your minority group if you're looking for people to support your idea. Most of the world does not follow Noah Webster's dumbed down revision of the English Language so that idiots can spell incorrectly.

I've browsed web pages on the way from my car back to my house, and then had to surf to the site again once I got in front of a desktop. That would be pretty much the only task I'd love to move from phone to PC.

Are you aware that you can actually push pages to your phone via Chrome Phone Extension? And of course sync bookmarks?

Did you know that with FireFox 4+ on your desktop and your phone that you can browse not just synced bookmarks, but also browse the currently open tabs one the other device and open those tabs? This feature is great for those days when you read half a/. story, realize you are late for client appointment, rush to get onsite (having to skip morning dump to save time). Finally once onsit

Actually the PC to phone has an obvious use-case: Build a custom map on google maps, and then "swipe" the "State" of google-maps to the phone, then you have your custom map/GPS/etc on your phone.

Also another use case would be Photos: (think from high end cameras and phones, with android) take your pictures, then move the "state" of those pics in a gallery app to the PC for easy moving of pics.

Shopping list app from the fridge(that may or may not auto-update itself to what is inside/used) to the phone.

This whole thing sounds geeky to me. I cannot think of a task started on a phone that I would like to transfer to a PC.Please enlighten me...or else I will be one of those who will propagate the fact that Android *is* indeed meant for geeks.

Yeah, +1.This propeller-head wireless stuff is way overkill.

Why can't we just sync over wire to some bloated application that will manage the device, do updates, and perhaps store music?

Yah, I know, Chrome OS isn't a "desktop" OS, but I could see integrating this with "bookmark sync". Put one device to sleep, and when you wake any 'paired' device, it opens to the same thing. Google Docs, Maps, random website, etc. Chrome OS is a good candidate for this since it's nearly all web-based already.

I could also see Apple doing this with iCloud. Edit a Pages document on your iPad and put it to sleep, and when you get home and wake up your iMac, it has that document already open. Reverse, too. Have a web page open in Safari on your MacBook, put it to sleep, unlock your iPhone, and that same web page is right there.

Heck, Microsoft could do this between Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8, while they're at it... Pretty much anywhere the mobile and "desktop" are the same ecosystem.

They're saying it will probably only work for web pages, not native apps (unsurprising, since you can't run the native apps on your phone anyway, whatever file you have open may not be synced to your phone, etc.), but that's ok, because mumble mumble cloud mumble.

But it already exists for web pages, it's called a qrcode bookmarklet for your browser, and any qrcode scanner for your phone (which, unlike this Google-only gimmick, exist for platforms other than Android). And just like this, it's extensible to a

Mod parent up! (Though please don't put WTF and idiot in your subject, or you sound like a troll)

Why are we wasting our time with screenshots when this barcode technology has existed for ages. I'm actually surprised that QR codes haven't really taken off in the US--I guess if the iPhone doesn't support it, nobody cares.

"The app works by taking a photo of your computer's screen, and, using pattern recognition algorithms, it ascertains what program you are currently running and the document you have open."

That sounds like a post from TheDailyWTF.. print it out on a sheet, then take a photograph then paste it into a word doc. Why don't they actually do something innovative, like creating a cross platform VM that uses shared memory across multiple devices, so that apps and memory can move seamlessly across them?. Or maybe just implement some kind of serialization into apps. But nooooo.. They had to go and use SCREEN SHOTS and OCR.

Samsung put a similar - but somewhat limited - version in their own Android market. It involved installing software on Windows. On the phone you'd take a picture of the file or filer in explorer, and it would copy that to the phone (the actual file, not the picture).

Neat idea, but I don't use windows, so no use to me. Can't find it back on my Gingerbread phone, but with Froyo it was in the list.

This app is interesting, because it doesn't require the PC to know anything about the phone picking up its state, or that the transfer is happening. The phone needs only recognize the URI that the PC is displaying, using the phone's camera and the software.

But what about PC state that isn't in that URI? Like when the onscreen state is composed of more than one URI, like a single window with multiple frames each pointed at a different URL? Or like multiple windows, each pointed at a different URL? Some of wh

Some of the suggestions such as "perhaps you were viewing your destination on Google Maps and want to transfer that to your smartphone" are already trivially easy from Chrome or Firefox. Using Chrome to phone I can transfer my Google Maps view to the phone with a single click. Using the phone to take a photo of the screen sounds like just another way to make an easy task hard for the sake of flashy use of technology.